The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches provide the foundation of the Cisco® Unified Fabric. They are a modular data center-class product line designed for highly scalable 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks. The fabric architecture scales beyond 15 terabits per second (Tbps), and is designed to support high-density 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet deployments. To meet the requirements of the most mission-critical network environments, the switches deliver continuous system operations and virtualized services. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series is powered by the proven Cisco NX-OS Software operating system, with enhanced features to deliver real-time system upgrades with exceptional manageability and serviceability. The software’s innovative unified fabric design is purpose-built to support consolidation of IP and storage networks on a single lossless Ethernet fabric.

Features and Benefits

The Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module offers outstanding flexibility and full-featured, non-blocking performance on each port. The module enables the deployment of high-density, high-speed, scalable data center architecture. Up to 384 non-blocking 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports are supported in a single Cisco Nexus 7000 18-Slot Switch chassis. Populating the Cisco Nexus 7000 10-Slot and 9-Slot Switch chassis with this module delivers, respectively, up to 192 and 168 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet in a single chassis (Table 1).

The Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module has a number of essential features that provide flexible deployment and support for environments requiring the highest performance and comprehensive features. With an optional Scalable Feature License, the module can operate in the enhanced XL mode, which enables use of the full forwarding table, essential for large-scale deployments such as Internet peering environments. This larger forwarding table can support multiple copies of the full Internet route table for use in Internet-facing deployments with Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) and Virtual Device Context (VDC) support. The capability to operate in either non-XL or XL mode makes this module extremely versatile and flexible for many types of networking environments, without requiring a hardware module change or upgrade, and delivers a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Table 2 lists the performance specifications for the Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module operating in non-XL and XL modes.

Table 2.Performance Specifications for Non-XL and XL Mode Operation

Item

Non-XL Mode

XL Mode (with Scalable Feature License)

MAC Entries

128K

128K

IPv4 Routes

128K

Up to 1M*

IPv6 Routes

64K

Up to 350K*

NetFlow Entries

512K

512K

Access Control List (ACL)

64K

128K

* Actual limit depends on prefix distribution

The Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module contains two integrated forwarding engines capable of delivering up to 120 million packets per second (Mpps) of Layer 2 and Layer 3 IPv4 unicast forwarding or 60 Mpps of IPv6 unicast forwarding across all ports of a single I/O module. The distributed architecture, with the forwarding engine integrated into each module, scales the forwarding performance of the chassis linearly by the number of I/O modules employed. The 18-slot chassis with 16 Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series modules can deliver up to 1.92 billion packets per second (Bpps) of IPv4 unicast forwarding or 960 Mpps of IPv6 unicast forwarding. Multicast forwarding is built into the I/O module, performing egress replication. The integrated forwarding engines also deliver ACL filtering, marking, rate limiting, and NetFlow with no degradation of performance. Powerful ACL processing supports up to 128K entries per module, where entries can address Layer 2, 3, and 4 fields in addition to the Cisco metadata fields that employ Security Group Tags (SGTs).

The Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module offers exceptional security with integrated hardware support for Cisco TrustSec® technology, including line-rate data confidentiality, data integrity, and ACL processing for SGTs. Data confidentiality and integrity conform to the IEEE MAC security standard (IEEE 802.1AE [MACsec]). All ports on the module support the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) cipher, using a 128-bit key. New security ACLs are enhanced through hardware support for Cisco metadata headers capable of carrying SGTs. Security group ACLs (SGACLs) use SGT information to provide hardware-based enforcement of security policies, removing dependencies on IP addresses, and thus improving scalability and simplifying manageability.

The Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module buffers data in Virtual Output Queues (VOQ) before the data flows to the fabric. The data flow is controlled by a central arbiter on the supervisor module, using a credit-based buffer design. This architecture offers a lossless fabric that delivers quality of service (QoS) and fairness across all ports, even during congestion.

The comprehensive feature set of the Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series module includes classis Layer 2 and Layer 3 forwarding, with the robust feature set offered by Cisco NX-OS Software: a modular multitasking and multithreaded operating system built with high availability, granular fault management, resiliency, and nondisruptive serviceability at its foundation. This extremely comprehensive set of Layer 2 and Layer 3 functions makes this module ideal for data center networks, where density, performance, and continuous system operation are critical.

* Initial software releases may support a subset of the overall hardware capabilities. Refer to the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series NX-OS release notes for up-to-date software version information and feature support.

Table 5 summarizes the interfaces, cabling specifications, and distances of SFP+ optics supported by the Cisco Nexus 7000 M2-Series 24-Port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Module with XL Option. Not all optics are supported in the first software release. Refer to the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series NX-OS Release Notes for up-to-date software version information and optics support details.

Cisco offers a wide range of services to help accelerate your success in deploying and optimizing Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches in your data center. Our innovative services are delivered through a unique combination of people, processes, tools, and partners and are focused on helping you increase operating efficiency and improve your data center network. Cisco Advanced Services uses an architecture-led approach to help you align your data center infrastructure with your business goals and provide long-term value. Cisco SMARTnet® Service helps you resolve mission-critical problems with direct access at any time to Cisco network experts and award-winning resources. With this service, you can take advantage of the Cisco Smart Call Home service capability, which